Softball: Norristown downs Wissahickon on Senior Night

LOWER GWYNEDD — Thursday afternoon’s softball game between Norristown and host Wissahickon had a lot to offer fans. It had the two best shortstops in the Suburban One League American Conference — Wissahickon’s Alex Cominitski and Norristown’s Monica Levins.

It featured teams that could hit well and were adept at pushing runs across the plate. The teams’ coaches were two of the deans of area scholastic softball — Wissahickon’s John Bilella and Norristown’s Jim McCarthy .

And, it was a showdown between teams that had each won eight of their 12 previous American Conference games.

With one round left in regular season league play after Thursday, the game between the Eagles and the Trojans was a pivotal match — an encounter that would virtually lock up second place for the winner.

Advertisement

Not surprisingly, the game had a lot of action — and a lot of scoring. The Eagles exploded for seven runs in the first two innings and used the outburst to propel them to a 10-6 win.

Levins started the Eagles’ first barrage of runs with a single in the first and then Taylor Copestick drew a base on balls. Norristown’s Maria Sinni delivered the first big blow of the game when she connected for a two-RBI double. She later scored on a single by Allyson Taylor. When the top half of the inning ended, the Eagles were ahead 4-0.

“We came out really strong in the first inning,” said Sinni, a sophomore. “We got the momentum right away. On my double, I think it was a fastball that I hit to right center. It was their Senior Night so we didn’t want to let them go easy. We’re a solid hitting team. Sometime we have our slumps, but we always get it back.”

In the second inning, consecutive singles by Sara Rosetti, Levins and Copestick and a two-RBI double by Brianna Kennedy allowed the Eagles to put three more runs on the scoreboard.

“The first inning really set the tone and then the second inning was big too,” said Levins, who will play for Philadelphia University next season. “It was their ‘Senior Night’ so they had momentum before the game even started. We knew we had to come out strong and crush them.”

The Trojans got one run in the second and then stranded four runners over the next two innings. Norristown padded its lead with a pair of runs in the top of the fifth. Wissahickon answered with a pair of runs in the bottom of the fifth but still trailed by six at 9-3.

Levins kicked off another scoring sequence for the Eagles with a single in her team’s one-run sixth inning. The Trojans rallied for three runs in the bottom of the sixth but it turned out to be a case of “too little too late.”

“We came into this game knowing that we needed to win to have a chance to get into districts (District 1 Class AAAA Championships),” said Levins, who played two seasons for Bilella (as a freshman at Kennedy-Kenrick and sophomore at Pope John Paul II).

“We came out strong. We all had good games. We worked together and we hit the ball. I was 3-for-4 at the plate and stole four bases so it was a good day for me.”

McCarthy said, “For the entire season, we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do. Our girls worked really hard to achieve it. We’ve had different girls step up when needed and we’ve gotten great leadership from our senior captains — Brianna Kennedy, Taylor Copestick, Sara Rosetti and Monica Levins.”

Bilella, whose team closes its season Monday against Upper Moreland, said, “We hurt ourselves. We made five or six errors and they got seven runs in the first and second inning. This is the second year in a row we’ve lost on Senior Night. But, that’s not an excuse. If you make six errors, you shouldn’t expect to win.”